London is no capital of culture without Vault Festival

Vault Festival has announced its venue has fallen through and the event is no more, says Adam Bloodworth Vault Festival launched the careers of thousands of actors and writers via its unique business model, which meant new performers could put on shows and not break the bank, because part of the show was paid for [...]

Mar 14, 2024 - 08:10

London is no capital of culture without Vault Festival

Vault Festival has cancelled their 2024 plans due to a lack of funding (Photo: Vault)

Vault Festival has announced its venue has fallen through and the event is no more, says Adam Bloodworth

Vault Festival launched the careers of thousands of actors and writers via its unique business model, which meant new performers could put on shows and not break the bank, because part of the show was paid for by ticket sales. But today the festival has announced it will not carry on because they cannot land the right funding.

It is a disgrace that England’s biggest arts festival has had to be cancelled amid this cost of living crisis when actors need help more than ever. The arts contributed £109bn to the UK economy in 2021, equivalent to 5.6 per cent of the UK economy that year according to the Lords Library, but landlords and investors have not stepped up when they needed to to protect one of the UK’s most integral places for new actors to practice their craft.

Press material read: “The irony that our platform that sought to support artists who have been failed and disenfranchised by the current funding, education, and institutional systems ultimately being undone by that very same system is not lost. Something needs to be done.”

Festival founders had been seeking social investment via repayable loans, from people called ‘impact investors’ who look for ‘impact’ from their cash injections rather than just pure financial profit. It had been a significant multi-year project to keep the festival going through the pandemic and then losing their much-loved permanent home last year in Waterloo, with the landlord prioritising commercial work over them and turfing them out.

Festival founders told City A.M. the emotional toll of searching for funding had become significant. Would they carry on looking for a new venue? Right now they are exhausted and “grieving” and not in the right head space. Creatives always have to fight to find a home, let alone keep it, and artists cannot make their best work when they are fighting to keep the lights on.

They had been searching for alternative streams of funding but time had run out on organising the opening of the major new space later this year. They need a sizeable donation to be able to keep going which has not come in.

There is barely a late-night entertainment space left in central London these days. The amount of power wielded by residents means even a handful of noise complaints can shut somewhere down, as local authorities side with the few rather than the many who stand to gain from our capital’s reputation as an entertainment capital.

It is a travesty that Vault Festival had to drag itself metres from the finishing line, touting its wares like some cheap fairground ride, to stay open and entertain us all. We should be throwing our money at it and begging them to keep going. R.I.P, and thanks for all the memories, but if London carries on turning its back on the arts it won’t take long for the word to get around: we’re not the capital of culture we claim to be.

Follow Vault and their future endeavours (which we really hope there will be) here. City A.M. has been campaigning to help save Vault Festival over the past year. Emma Corrin and the cast of Bridgerton are some of the famous names that backed our campaign to save the UK’s second-largest arts festival.